Take this with a massive pinch of salt, of course, as we can't verify the report, but it does make horrifying sense. Sony's got a patent going the same way, and if you think about it, console manufacturers actually make their money from the software sold. That means games, and every time someone buys a used game over a new one, that essentially cuts Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo out of it. In fact, the only people who benefit from used game sales are the high street stores, or you, if you're flogging your old crap on eBay.

It all comes down to what you're actually buying. When you buy a disc, you're not actually buying the game outright, you're buying a licence to play that game. Yes, it comes on a physical disc, but that's only the delivery mechanism. What the Edge report indicates is that Xbox games will ship with a one-time activation code, essentially bestowing the first person who buys the game a licence bound to their account forever more.

That might be difficult to swallow for many -- we like the idea that we own something outright and can sell it on if we're done with it -- but that's exactly how digital downloads work. It's not like you can turn round and resell your downloaded game once you're done. If Game's still in business by the time the Durango gets released, surely this'll be the nail in the coffin?

Edge Online also has it that the next-gen Xbox will pack an eight-core AMD CPU clocked at 1.6GHz, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, as well as a Blu-ray player and a new version of Kinect, which lines up well with what we've previously heard. [Edge via Kotaku]